Barely enough for a snowball fight ... and this is at the highest point of a major Aussie ski resort. Pic: ski.com.auSource: news.com.au

A WASHOUT. An absolute washout. Heavy overnight rain, hot on the heels of a week of way-above-average temperatures, has left the Australian snow resorts looking like the Australian grass resorts.

This time last week, things were looking all right and all white. The snow cover reached a depth of 64cm in NSW, and that wasn't ski resort PR. That was the official depth from Snowy Hydro, which measures the snow weekly so it knows exactly how much water will run into its dams.

The depth yesterday was down to 30cm, and that was before last night's deluge. The snow has been decimated after a week in which Sydney had consistent mid-twenties temperatures and Melburnians enjoyed their hottest ever July temperature of 23.3 degrees.

As the whole of south-eastern Australia has basked in a super warm week, all eight mainland ski resorts have lost much of their snow. Mt Buller in Victoria had more than half of its 22 lifts open last week. Today it has a ski carpet about 10m long open for beginners. It's a similar picture elsewhere.

The good news is, it's going to start snowing heavily from this afternoon or evening. A huge cold front lurking in the Great Australian Bight is set to cross the Alps and deliver up to a metre of white gold.

So much snow could fall that resorts could have all lifts open by about next Wednesday. Here's hoping.

The bad news is, this is the sort of on-again, off-again season we could see more of in the future if the global warming trend continues.

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology reported yesterday that average maximum temperatures were 2.1 degrees above average in Melbourne from January 1 to July 17 this year. And that's just one location which has experienced a super warm autumn and early winter, following a record hot summer.

Australian ski resorts have cleverly tried to counter global warming by investing heavily in snow-making technology.

Snow-making saved them in the worst ever season of 2006, when total revenues were around 80 per cent of the norm because resorts were able to keep loads of terrain open despite a lack of natural snow.

But snow-making only works when night-time temperatures are cold enough to pump a fine mist into the air which settles on the ground as the next best thing to real snow. Needless to say, it doesn't work if the air isn't cold enough, or if it's raining.

And boy, has it rained this week.

The long term outlook for the Australian ski industry is a little bleak to say the least. The immediate outlook for the next few days is also cloudy - but hopefully those clouds bring snow, and plenty of it.

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